


My Spirit Is Still Glad Of Breath

by inexplicifics



Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [18]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Conversations, Drunkenness, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, The Trials Are Horrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25808521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Three conversations in the aftermath of Jaskier's de-aging and Aubry's successful effort to convince the Witchers of Kaer Morhen to change the way they train their new recruits.
Relationships: Eskel & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Lambert (The Witcher)/Original Female Character(s), Vesemir (The Witcher) & Guxart (The Witcher)
Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683661
Comments: 161
Kudos: 2499





	My Spirit Is Still Glad Of Breath

**Vesemir**

Vesemir walks very carefully as he leaves the hall, as though he is carrying an overfull basin of water, which will spill if he sets a single foot wrong. If he is jostled - if he thinks about anything but the placement of each foot, the next patch of stone, the next doorway - he might overflow.

Guxart catches up to him a corridor away from his rooms, and falls into step beside him without a word. Vesemir doesn’t acknowledge him with more than a nod - he _can’t_. Not until they reach his rooms, and he closes the door behind them and collapses into a chair and can cover his face with his hands and let the emotion spill out, like one of those ocean waves that rises out of the depths to devour entire towns. He can’t even name the emotion, can’t articulate any of it, even in his thoughts, except for one bitter word, half a prayer and half a curse:

 _Gods_.

Guxart makes a startled sound - Vesemir almost always has his emotions under much better control than this, good enough that he usually only smells calm, regardless of what he’s feeling _under_ his iron control - and Vesemir is glad, not for the first time, that his friend is a _Cat_ , because Guxart comes and perches on the arm of Vesemir’s chair and drapes an arm around Vesemir’s shoulders and just sits there, radiating affection, until Vesemir has stopped _shaking_.

Finally, when the fit has mostly passed, Guxart murmurs, “Alright there, old Wolf?”

“Gods,” Vesemir says, the word feeling like it tears his throat as it emerges, and Guxart gets up and goes to pour a mug full of the really good ale Vesemir keeps hidden away in a cabinet, brings it over and presses it into Vesemir’s hands.

“ _Drink_ ,” he says, and Vesemir drinks. The bitter richness of the ale is grounding.

“Now,” Guxart says, once Vesemir has drained the mug and Guxart has refilled it and hunkered down in front of Vesemir, staring up at him in obvious concern, “I thought you’d be happy about this.”

“I am,” Vesemir rasps.

“Don’t _look_ happy,” Guxart says. “Sure as hell don’t _smell_ happy.”

Vesemir takes another long drink of ale and closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath, and - as he has so many, many times before - pulls himself together.

“It has taken so long,” he says finally. “We have done so much harm. _I_ have done so much harm.”

“Ah,” Guxart says, and sighs. “Well, I wish I could tell you that wasn’t true, but you’d smell the lie. On t’other hand, you’ve done a lot less harm than anyone _else_ would’ve in your shoes, and when Aubry fuckin’ rubbed our noses in it, you backed him, and now we’re going to change. So.”

Vesemir drains the mug of ale and puts it down, and rests his elbows on his knees, and puts his head into his hands. “So many dead,” he says, to the darkness behind his eyelids, to the quiet sound of Guxart’s breathing. “So many scarred. So much I should have done.” The darkness is not black enough to hide the scrolling list of names - so many names, so many boys.

Guxart punches him, fairly gently, in the leg. “Fuck’s sake, old Wolf,” he says. “You did the best you could. Now you’ll do better. What’s it you always say to the new boys before they head out on the Path?”

“A Witcher learns from his mistakes, and does not repeat them,” Vesemir recites softly. “All Witchers make mistakes, but only the ones who learn from them survive.”

“Gonna take your own advice, then, old Wolf?” Guxart prods. “Or gonna sit here and wallow until I get fed up and toss you out a window?”

Vesemir unexpectedly finds a chuckle rising to his lips. “Guess I’d better take my own advice,” he says, and drops his hands, and gives his friend a wry smile. “Though I’d like to see you _try_ to fling me out a window, young Cat.”

“Hey now, I am _two years_ younger than you are,” Guxart grumbles. “That’s hardly anything after three hundred years!”

“Still younger,” Vesemir says, the old tease tripping easily off his tongue. “Whippersnapper.”

“I’ll whippersnapper you,” Guxart says, making a cheerfully obscene gesture and flopping back on the floor, dramatic as only a Cat can be. “So what, you gonna be mopey for months? Go hide up the mountain like your grumpy son? Sulk around like fucking _Lambert?_ ”

“No,” Vesemir says softly. “No. I’m going to learn to do better. _We_ will learn to do better. And our new brothers will be trained by kinder methods than we were.”

“There we go,” Guxart says, smiling, and rolls to his feet to draw them each a mug of good ale. “To learning from our mistakes.”

“To being better,” Vesemir says, and taps his mug against Guxart’s, and drinks deep.

**Milena**

“Lambert,” Milena says softly. Her head is resting on his shoulder, black hair spread out on the pillow behind her in a rose-scented tangle, one arm thrown over his broad chest. His arm cradles her close, hand spread over her hip; his other hand is tracing idle patterns on her forearm.

She never dreamed of moments like this, back in Redania - quiet, calm, _contented_ moments, cradled in a lover’s arms, safe and happy down to her very bones. She knew even as a fairly young girl that a duke’s daughter would never marry for love, and the likelihood of her finding even simple affection with her eventual husband was regrettably slim. She is astonished, sometimes, when she stops and really _thinks_ about how much her life has changed since she came to Kaer Morhen. How much _better_ it is.

“Mm?” Lambert says, drowsy and pleased. She kind of regrets the fact that her next question is going to disturb the peaceful mood, but she has to know.

“The other night,” she says slowly, “during the discussion of whether to change the training. You said -” she breaks off, not quite sure how to phrase the question.

Lambert sighs, and rolls onto his side, nuzzling the top of her head as he curls around her. “I said a lot of nasty shit, is what I said,” he murmurs.

“A bit,” Milena admits. The sheer _rage_ in his words had startled her more than a little - she’s _never_ heard him speak so. It sounded like - well, it sounded like eighty years of bitterness, bottled up and kept close and finally poured out into the air, all the stronger for its long distillation.

Lambert is quiet for a little while, clearly thinking, and Milena cuddles close and doesn’t prod him. He’ll talk when he’s ready. Finally he says, “Up until about fifteen years ago, I fucking _hated_ being a Witcher.”

Milena draws in a sharp breath. Whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t that.

“Most kids,” Lambert says, picking every word slowly and carefully, “back before this whole Warlord...thing, they were brought here young. _Really_ fucking young, sometimes; I think Geralt was three.” Milena’s breath hisses between her teeth: the idea of a three-year-old Geralt, here in this cold keep, is somehow both incomprehensible and utterly appalling. “They didn’t _remember_ ,” Lambert continues. “Got raised here. Didn’t know any fucking thing else.” He makes a soft snarling noise. “Fuckin’ awful, but...better, maybe.”

“You weren’t,” Milena guesses, feeling slightly ill.

“I was nine,” Lambert says. “Witcher saved my bastard asshole father’s life. He couldn’t fucking _pay_ , of course, so he offered a kid. Witcher took him up on it.”

“Gods,” Milena whispers. Nine-year-old Lambert, _knowing_ he’s just been sent off to - to be killed, like as not, with the horrid death-toll of the Trials before Triss’s intervention.

“I was old enough to know what was coming,” Lambert continues. “To really fuckin’ _resent_ the...everything, really. An’ Varin and the rest, they tried to beat that out of me, and it _did not fucking work_.” He pauses, sighs, and says reluctantly, “Vesemir wasn’t bad, I guess. Except he kept tellin’ us it was some sort of fucking _honorable profession_ , like we didn’t all know we were gonna go out and get _spat_ on for bein’ monsters.”

Milena makes a tiny, wounded noise, and Lambert kisses the top of her head gently. “You aren’t monsters,” she whispers, in the warm dark space between their bodies. It maybe took her a little while to really _believe_ that, when she first encountered Witchers, but she knows it now. They are men, and most of them are better men than the ordinary sort.

“We aren’t now,” Lambert says. “We...maybe used to be.” There’s a long pause, while Milena tries desperately not to imagine nine-year-old Lambert, furious at the world, bloodied and beaten and still spitting defiance at the men who dared to think they could break his spirit.

“I’ve never asked,” Lambert says at last, soft and almost contemplative, “but I think they almost put me down, after the Trials.”

“What?” Milena asks, baffled. That _can’t_ mean what it sounds like.

“There’s a - a code of conduct, I guess. Stuff you gotta do, stuff you really fuckin’ _can’t_ do. Most of it’s not that stupid, really. You gotta have _rules_ , if you’re gonna send a bunch of fuckin’ inhuman monsters out on the Path, yeah? All the Schools had _different_ ones, back then, but Wolves were the first School, got the oldest rules. The ones Geralt built the new laws on, after Ard Carraigh and all.”

“What sort of rules?” Milena whispers.

“No rape, no robbery, no killin’ humans without good reason, finish the fucking contract if you take it,” Lambert recites. “No flyin’ off the handle and just straight up stabbing some fucker who spat on you. That’s what the trainers were worried about, with me.”

“Ah,” says Milena, finding it very easy to picture just such a scene. She can _definitely_ imagine Lambert stabbing someone who thought they could treat him ill simply for being a Witcher. Possibly not a _fatal_ stabbing, but still. “You said - put you down?”

“Sometimes there’s one who makes it through the Trials, who think he can be a real _asshole_ just ‘cause he’s stronger than any human’s ever gonna be,” Lambert says. “Not often. Trainers weed ‘em out pretty well beforehand. But the Trials fuck with us, and sometimes we come out...wrong.”

Milena shivers. The idea of a man like - like old Lord Velen, say, but with a Witcher’s strength and abilities, is horrifying. “Gods.”

“No gods about it,” Lambert says harshly. “Anyhow. Someone like that...the trainers put him down, same as they would a rabid dog.”

“And they thought _you_ -” Milena breaks off, shuddering. _Gods!_ No, not her Lambert - the very thought is viscerally abhorrent. Not her foul-mouthed, gentle-handed Lambert.

“Yeah.” Lambert sighs heavily and rolls onto his back, tucking one arm behind his head and staring up at the darkness shrouding the ceiling. Even with his cat-slitted eyes, Milena doesn’t think he’s actually _seeing_ anything - or at least, nothing of the present. He’s lost in memories of a long-gone, horrid time.

She desperately regrets bringing the subject up, but there’s nothing for it now but to see it through. She props herself up on one elbow and reaches out to trace his hairline, cups her hand around his cheek, his beard pleasantly scratchy against her palm. “Not you,” she whispers. “You could never be that sort of monster.”

Lambert turns his head and kisses her palm softly; his arm tightens a little around her waist, pulling her closer. His skin is very warm against her own.

“Think it was Vesemir saved me,” he says at last. “Heard him, once, saying angry wasn’t the same as fucking _vicious_. But they still all thought I’d die, that first year out on the Path. Half of us did. Too easy to get cocky, get yourself in a fight that’s too big for you. All the trainers figured I’d get angry, do something really fucking stupid, get myself dead.” He shrugs a little. “I didn’t.”

“Thank every god,” Milena says fervently. “Thank _fuck_.”

The coarse word breaks him out of his musings, and Lambert snorts a laugh as he focuses on her face instead of his dark memories. He tugs his hand out from behind his head and reaches up to touch her lips, callused fingertips rough and gentle on the soft skin. “Probably should feel bad about teachin’ you to curse like that,” he murmurs.

“Never,” Milena says, smiling down at him. “Never feel bad about _anything_ you have taught me, my love.”

Lambert’s smile softens, to a warm sweet expression that only Milena - and perhaps Aiden, sometimes - ever sees.

“I hated it,” he says, quiet like a secret. “Being a Witcher. Fighting monsters isn’t so bad - at least you get to fucking _kill_ them - but all the rest of it. Hunger, and hatred, and being spat on by the same fuckers who _begged_ me to save their stupid fucking towns, rocks and shit and always the worst food and the worst beds if they’d even let me _stay_ in an inn, and never any hope for anything else. I hated it all.” His fingers trail up to a wisp of her hair that has stuck to her forehead, and he teases it gently free and coils it around a finger before smoothing it back again. “Hated it, and hated _them_ ,” he finishes. “Townspeople and trainers and just about everybody, really. And then...well. Geralt.”

“Geralt, and Ard Carraigh,” Milena says, nodding. The world changed, old ways sliced away with the swift stroke of the White Wolf’s sword, and Witchers became something more than what they had been.

Lambert nods agreement.

“Do you - do you still hate it?” Milena asks tentatively.

“Nah,” Lambert says. “It’s not pure shit anymore. Nobody’s spat on me in years. People fucking _sing_ at me sometimes. An’ I still get to kill monsters.”

Milena giggles; she can’t help it.

“But I haven’t forgotten, and I sure as hell haven’t _forgiven_ ,” Lambert adds, scowling blackly. “Fuckers coulda trained us a dozen different ways. Coulda been a fucking _hell_ of a lot less brutal. Coulda done a lot of things. Now -” he smiles, crooked and small but real. “Now I guess they’re gonna.”

“At last,” Milena says, and Lambert nods.

“Took us fucking long enough,” he agrees.

“I wish you hadn’t gone through that,” Milena says slowly. “I may yet weep for the child that you once were, and his agonies, as bitterly as I have done over young Julian’s fears. But I am very selfishly glad, my love, that you survived.”

“So’m I,” Lambert says, sounding almost surprised by the words. “ _Now_ \- with the whole Warlord thing, and you and Buttercup and Aiden and the cub, and - everything, I guess - I guess I’m glad, too.”

Milena kisses him, because what else is she going to do with a statement like that? And Lambert laces his hand through her hair and kisses back, warm and eager, slow heartbeat steady as a drum beneath her hands.

**Yennefer**

Yen twitches her fingers to open the door, not bothering to rise from her comfortable sprawl on the overstuffed chaise longue. Eskel comes padding in, silent even in his heavy boots, and closes the door gently behind him before setting a small keg down on the mantel and sagging into a chair beside the fire.

“Brought mead,” he says.

Yen lifts her goblet of wine in a faint approximation of a toast. “Drink up, then,” she says. “I intend to get very drunk and then pass out. Possibly after crying.”

“Hm,” Eskel says, sounding very like Geralt, and reaches up to draw himself a mug of what smells like very good mead. Yen has charmed her goblet to be self-refilling as long as she is holding it, and is mildly smug about having done so.

They drink in peaceful silence for a few minutes, watching the fire crackle happily in the hearth.

“So we’re not killing the Count de Lettenhove, then,” Eskel says at last.

“Apparently not,” Yen says. “Pity, that. I still think he’d make a lovely slug.”

Eskel hums again. “Seems too merciful somehow. Slugging him, I mean.”

Yen realizes she’s drunker than she’d thought when that makes her giggle. She usually has much better self-control than to giggle, at least in company. But hell with it, Eskel’s one of her best friends these days, and he’s making _serious_ inroads on the mead. Not that even fairly strong mead does much to a Witcher, but still. He’s not got a leg to stand on. “What would you do?”

Eskel ponders for a while, staring into the fire. And then, quietly, he says, “If it were up to me? For the man who hurt our lark so badly? I’d give him the Grasses.”

Yen’s jaw drops, and she half sits up, staring at Eskel in astonishment. “You’d make him a _Witcher?_ ”

“No,” Eskel says, and turns to meet her eyes squarely, expression grim. “I’d strap him to a table and watch him scream himself to death, in the worst agony a man can feel.” His lips quirk, just a little, in an utterly mirthless smile. “There’s a reason we use _boys_ , you know, not grown men. After a certain age, it doesn’t matter if you _can_ tolerate the Grasses. The stress it puts on the body is too much; every single attempt to use the mutagens on anyone older than about twenty-five ended in an even more horrific death than the Grasses _usually_ do. I’ve seen the records.”

“Oh,” Yen says, and subsides back into her sprawl. “Well. That’s charmingly vicious, my friend.” It’s honestly rather more vicious than she’d thought Eskel _could_ be. He’s usually - _soft_ is the wrong word for a man who survived more than fifty years on the Path, who has killed men and monsters without remorse, who has kept order among the Witchers of Kaer Morhen. But _gentle_ might be accurate enough. She has seen him cradle children in those big, scarred hands, stitch a man’s wounds, calm a frightened horse. He is usually so calm, so composed, that it is easy sometimes to forget that he is a _Wolf_ , as fierce and dangerous as all his brethren - dangerous enough to be the White Wolf’s right hand.

Eskel shrugs. “I can daydream about it as much as I please,” he says, and turns back to draw himself another mug of mead. “It’s not likely to be an option. It’d make Jaskier unhappy, though fuck knows _why_ , and in any case if we go to war with Redania there’s a decent chance the Count de Lettenhove will end up gutted on a battlefield. Assuming he’s got the balls to actually stand and fight. And if Geralt _does_ end up taking him prisoner - well, it’s Geralt. He’ll just have the fucker’s head taken off.”

Yen sighs. Geralt is far too noble for his own good, sometimes. Most of the time, really. Back before she came to Kaer Morhen, she would have laughed herself sick at the idea of a _noble_ Witcher, but Geralt really genuinely is just that _good_ , the very model of what a king truly ought to be. Well, a bit rough around the edges, yes, but smart and moral and kind and ruthless and genuinely devoted to his people, which is a damned rare combination in _anyone_ , much less a monarch. “Beheading’s too good for that bastard,” she grumbles.

“Oh, believe me, I quite agree,” Eskel says. “Hm. We should make an effigy, maybe. Target practice would get very popular.”

Yen giggles again. “Oh, gods, Jaskier would be horrified.”

“He hardly ever comes out onto the training grounds,” Eskel muses. “And his eyesight’s not _that_ good. If it was a fair way away from the walls…”

Yen giggles harder. “I like it. And Ciri would probably enjoy using it for fire-spell practice…”

Eskel snorts. “Oh, the cub would be _delighted_.” He hesitates, then sighs. “She’s grown up so much, this past month, helping to look after little Julian. And - ah, fuck it, Yen, she’s learned to hate.”

Yen winces. Oh yes, Ciri has learned to hate the Count de Lettenhove, as much as all the adults around her do. Has learned that parents can be cruel beyond belief to their children, and _despises_ it. Yen’s never told Ciri about her _own_ childhood - has done her best to forget the whole debacle herself - and even Lambert has never breathed a word about _his_ horrid father; as far as Ciri’s ever known, all fathers are as kind and loving and devoted as her own. But now she knows better.

Yen, too, would have preferred that Ciri be much older before she learned how cruel the world can be. Ciri is her dearer-than-daughter, the child she would have _wanted_ to bear if she’d only been able, bright and bold and clever, powerful and sweet and fierce. Yen would burn the world to keep her safe, without any hesitation at all, but the simple fact that there are monstrous men - well, that’s not something Yen can change, much as she would like to. And while Yen can keep any of those men from ever harming Ciri...she can’t change the past enough to keep Jaskier safe from his own damned _father_ , nor to keep Ciri from learning of that cruelty.

Gods damn it.

Yen drains her goblet again, and watches it refill itself. “How old were you, when you learned to hate?” she asks quietly. She herself can’t remember. Younger than twelve, certainly. Much younger.

Eskel snorts. “How old was I when my uncle gave me to the Witchers?”

“Ah,” Yen says. There’s a long silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the sound of liquid gurgling as they drink.

Yen’s had quite a lot of wine by now. Possibly the self-refilling spell was slightly foolish. It’s only the wine, she knows, that loosens her tongue enough to say, “At least our cub learned to love first. I didn’t.”

Eskel makes a soft, unhappy sound, and reaches over to pat her hand. “She’ll be better’n we are,” Eskel says. “Our moon-bright cub.”

“She will,” Yen agrees. “She _will_.” Yen will burn the world, if she has to, so that Ciri never needs to bear the sort of pain _she_ did. And Eskel and Geralt will be right beside her, Igni blazing in their hands. For Ciri, they would _all_ do terrible things.

For Jaskier, too, and there’s the trouble: he doesn’t _want_ them to.

“Still want to turn the fucking Count into a slug,” she grumbles into her wine.

Eskel chuckles. “Still think that’s too simple,” he replies. “Unless we built a little slug obstacle course, or something, maybe…”

“Slug _obstacle course_?” Yen says, blinking at him in baffled amusement.

“Lined with salt,” Eskel elaborates.

Yen boggles. “How the fuck do you get a slug to run an obstacle course?”

“Put - put beer at the end,” Eskel says, gesturing with his mug of mead. “And then they go slithering through the maze, and they get to the end, and they fall in and _drown_.”

Yen narrows her eyes. “How do you know so much about slugs?”

“Used to help Barmin in the herb garden,” Eskel shrugs. “Slugs’re nasty little things. Hate ‘em.” He drains his mug again.

He’s...a lot drunker than he ought to be, Yen thinks blearily. “Did you spike that with White Gull?”

“Yes,” Eskel says, grinning unrepentantly. “Want some?”

“Hell no,” Yennefer says. She tried White Gull _once_ , the year she first came to Kaer Morhen, and she has never had a hangover so bad before or since - off of _one cup_ , and not a large one either.

“Fair,” Eskel says, and drains his mug again. Yennefer giggles and puts her goblet down. She’s drunk enough to be sleepy, and also to find the sight of a soused Witcher to be absolutely hilarious.

“You build the obstacle course,” she murmurs, “and I’ll get you the slug.”

“Deal,” Eskel says, and rises. Yen can’t quite keep her eyes from slipping closed, but she’s still just barely awake as Eskel lifts the blanket from the end of her couch and spreads it over her, tucking it around her shoulders tenderly. “You and me, we’ll look out for our pack,” he whispers. “All of them.”

“Hm,” Yen agrees, smiling a little without opening her eyes. “Turn all our enemies into slugs.”

“Just so,” Eskel says, and brushes a kiss over her forehead. His breath reeks of mead and White Gull, and Yen marvels a little that he’s still _upright_. “Drown ‘em all in beer. Terrors of the continent, we’ll be.”

“Our vengeance shall be _slugs_ ,” Yen says, and passes out.

She wakes, warm and comfortable, with the blanket tucked around her and a mug of water and one of Triss’s good pain relief potions on the little table near her head, and a scrap of parchment next to them with a crude drawing of what she finally decides is a very worried slug in the middle of a maze, with a vat of beer waiting at the end.

She pins the sketch up above her desk, a reminder of what she and Eskel _could_ do - _will_ do, if they must. If anyone ever dares hurt their Jaskier again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for the comments and kudos and support; I cannot tell you how much it means to me. Please feel free to come scream at me on tumblr (inexplicifics) or Discord (inexplicifics #2690).
> 
> I have many, many more plotbunnies for this series, and I hope to keep writing it for quite a long time.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] My Spirit Is Still Glad Of Breath](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25850101) by [AceOfTigers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceOfTigers/pseuds/AceOfTigers)




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